I talked about the MYTH that Social Media PR disasters have not really destroyed sales, but rather, caused unnecessary customer service issues and dinged reputations.

The very next day I came across this article by Jason Notte that illustrates a case of breathtakingly shortsightedness. While Social Media alone was not the company’s coffin maker, its megaphone, combined with poor planning did, indeed, destroy a company.

Solid Gold Bomb, a T shirt company dependent upon Amazon sales for its user-created tee shirts, committed commercial suicide by not thinking through what might happen if those designs were offensive.

Due to outrage over misogynist T shirts slogans created on his website, the company is out of money and ‘dead in the water.’

Gaming doesn’t pay in the long run

The owner of the business was narrowly focused on making money.

Yet he also admits that he never gave the company’s list of random words a close look and simply used it to boost his catalog offerings from 1,000 to 10 million in an attempt to game Amazon and make his shirts visible to more customers.

Laziness is not good for business

By attempting to skip over a key design element while dabbling in math with unforeseen ramifications, Fowler learned a lesson that fortune cookie makers learned long ago: Check in on the product every so often.

The solid business truism that smart companies have know for eons is this: Gimmicks don’t work in the long run. Gaming Amazon is what cost Michael Fowler his company.

Companies that are successful long term do the hard work, and do not overlook the necessary element: planning.

VP of Content & Strategy at ArCompany. She has an extensive background in Sales, and focuses on generational marketing and content. With Hessie Jones she founded ArCompany’s Millnnnial, GenX and Boomer Think Tanks and writes and speaks on those topics from an insights/strategy perspective.